Bus in Gensokyo
by Insert Typical Username Here
Summary: Rule states that if it exists, it has a crossover with Touhou. In a complete abandonment of common sense, this is an attempt to suck poor Xenoblade into that "rule." Post-game-max-level Shulk gets thrown through the Boundary! Wacky shenanigans to be had in the wonderful world of overpowered people! Also, SPOILERS ABOUND.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue: An Average Day in a Not-So-Average Land

It was an average day in the peaceful land of Gensokyo.

Bear in mind, however, that Gensokyo's "average" is anything but—and there is very little "peaceful" about the Land of Illusions. That being said, it was _relatively_ average, and _relatively_ peaceful. That is, of course, if one counts quadrillions of energy bullets flying all over the place on a daily basis peaceful. Or certain nineballs freezing random things on a whim. Or certain witches attempting to steal (again) from a certain librarian.

Flan causing a mess.

Yuyuko being, well, Yuyuko.

Suika being drunk.

Moukou and Kaguya going at it. Again.

Aya breaking the sound barrier every half hour.

Sanae piloting her giant robot around. She's close to perfecting the barrel roll, did you know?

Iku dancing—wait, that's actually normal behavior.

Okuu . . . _was_ . . . doing . . . something. She forgot, unyu.

Kogasa attempting to scare people, and failing miserably.

Yoshika trying to eat everything. Including Mystia. Cue Spell Card battle.

Sekibanki loosing her head . . . _again_.

Mima trying to remain inconspicuous and failing—it's quite obvious that Reimu knows she's there.

Genji sleeping. Come on, _tell_ me that's not abnormal behavior. Next thing you'll say is that he talks and can fly.

Kotohime . . . being Kotohime.

Elly failing at her job—wait, nevermind, that actually is abnormal behavior. For her.

Yuki and Mai arguing. Again.

Rinnosuke PWNING the fools who harass him. He has the title of "Trollsuke" for a reason, Cirno.

A Gappy Stu or two _attempting_ to be awesome. And instead ending up failing miserably. Per normal.

The Barrier breaking.

Reimu beating the crap out of fools.

Someone falling into Gensokyo.

Yukari fooling around again.

Hina spinning.

The Buddhists . . . Buddhing.

The Taoists . . . Taoing.

Reimu beating up MOAR FUULZ.

Rumia crashing into st—

Wait.

The Barrier just cracked.

. . . In case you couldn't tell, that's _not normal_.

. . . Aaaaand someone fell through. Great.

Looks like we have a gen-yew-wine-captial-eye Incident on our hands, folks!

. . . No, no, no, don't worry, this isn't one of those Gappy-Stu-worst-incident-ever-fanfiction incidents. No, Reimu can handle this all on her own.

She can, right?

. . . right?

. . . we are screwed.

But hey, this is normal. At least, for Gensokyo. It's just an average day in bullet hell, ya know?

Except _this_ time . . .

We have one _special_ guest.

Welcome, readers, to the wonderful world of Gensokyo!

A Gensokyo unlike _any_ you've seen before.

So buckle up, this bus stops for no one.

It's gonna be one Old Hell of a ride!

Or maybe just a Makai for a ride. Or Hakugyokuro. Or maybe I'll just stop here.


	2. Chapter 2

Welcome to the start of Bus in Gensokyo! Since this is the first chapter, I'll say the disclaimer for the entire fic: I, [Insert Typical Username Here], own nothing, nothing, nothing at all, save that of which that I, [Insert Typical Username Here], have created. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Mandatory Introduction Chapter

The Barrier was cracking. That much Reimu was sure of. It was a pain, really. The Barrier had cracked once or twice before, but _never_ to this extent. No, not even close. The cracks had always been much . . . bigger. This crack was by far the smallest crack she had ever seen. As she knelt down by the foot-long break in the magical boundary, she felt some sort of . . . _energy_ emanating from the wannabe fissure. Like most (magical) energies, this energy was neither good, nor bad—just powerful.

The Shrine Maiden of Paradise sighed. "First that Diamondback chump, then that idiot homunculus, and now this." She glanced back at the tiny splinters. "This thing is so small, it's almost worth overlooking . . . But it's not," she decided, readying her _gohei_. A magic circle formed under her, lazily undulating as Reimu called upon her bloodline's holy magic.

"By the power of the Hakurei, yada yada, let this crack be sealed, blah blah blah." Reimu incanted. The crack shone brightly, and then closed.

Reimu blinked. "Huh, I was expecting more." she muttered. "The last time I did that the blueblood fell from the sky . . ." she turned away and shook her head. She started to walk away, and then stopped. Something was not right. Things were _never_ this easy—_especially_ in Gensokyo. The _miko_ slowly turned around, eyes narrowed and focused at where the crack used to be. As she had expected, something _was_ amiss. She had not expected the crack to vanish, though, and be replaced with a strange symbol—a circle around a skewed cross. As the Universal Rule of Plot Devices and Magical Instruments says that everything powerful must glow, so did the symbol. It glowed with a light of moderate intensity, not unlike that of a several-year-old desk lamp. However, it did nothing else save glow.

Reimu was about to go look at it closer when suddenly, she felt a presence behind her.

She ignored it.

The presence continued to exist, malevolently making weird faces and waving its phantasmagorical body around in a truly grudging manner.

She still ignored it.

The presence, which we shall refer to as a "she" because _obviously_ everything in Gensokyo is female (don't tell Rinnosuke) continued to perform its wicked, cultist Hokey Pokey dance of evil.

She ignored it. Again.

The presence, fed up with this mistreatment and utter disinterest in her many acts of felony, threw her staff at Reimu. The shrine maiden dodged, backflipped, and kicked the presence in the face. The presence flew several feet backwards and slammed into the shrine gate.

Reimu stomped over to the terrifying presence that was wriggling on the floor in a definitely terrifying way who was in no way in pain and grabbed her by the throat. Er, shirt. Er, sleeve.

Never mind, it's Reimu. She grabbed her by the face.

Reimu threw the presence back to the ground in a truly graceful manner, and proceeded to with all femininity and dignity suplex the great and terrible presence.

"What the (one of the many Hells around Gensokyo), Mima? I'm busy! Leave me alone!"

The Obviously Evil spirit sat up and chuckled. How one can sit without any legs is something you'll have to go to Gensokyo to find out. The perilous spirit struck a pose that would be more befitting of Kazuki Muto than, well, Mima. "My dear Reimu! How long it's been!"

"You've been here since before the Makai Incident, Mima." Reimu deadpanned.

"Don't give me that! Look at how you've grown!"

"I saw you last week."

"No you haven't! I haven't shown up in a Touhou game since Mystic Square!"

"Those are _games_, Mima. Made by an Oni. While drunk. This is _real life_."

"ZUN is our life!"

"I beat up ZUN several days ago for trying to swipe my donations. _He_ answers to _me_."

Mima gasped, a truly terrifying gasp that would strike fear into the hearts of men. "No! You couldn't!" She wailed a great whale—er, wail, that would . . . you know what, forget it. "You have doomed us all!"

A sudden nose suddenly alerted the two suddenly to a sudden calamity whose sudden calamitous suddenness brought sudden calamity. Suddenly.

Reimu flew over to the strange mark. It was glowing more intensely now, akin to that of a newly-installed fluorescent light bulb. Oh, and Mima's staff-blade-thing was sticking out of it.

"Mima . . ." Reimu growled.

The evil spirit laughed. "Just as planned, dear Reimu! I knew you would dodge it, and I wanted to see what you were looking at but you weren't paying attention to me and I was lonely and you were being mean and I don't know where Marisa is and-"

She never got to finish that obnoxious run-on, for the instant after Reimu firmly lodged her fist in the not-quite-a-ghost's face the symbol shattered with a great shatter. Um, I mean, crash. Crack. Whatever.

The bright light grew in intensity, and, without warning, shot a beam to the distant top of the barrier. Where the beam struck a portal bearing the same skewed-left-cross-circle as the symbol appeared, and through it one could see a dark purple-ish realm, similar to the Gap Hag's.

And, of course, somebody fell out. Not some_thing_, it's never something. Always some_one_.

Reimu couldn't make out what that person looked like, but it was enough to know that this was _probably_ the start of an Incident.

She smiled—one that would strike unease in the hearts of those who did not know her, fear in the hearts that did, and indifference in the heart of Lady Sasori.

"Wait there, Mima, I'll be back. Oh, and if Suika shows up, tell her I'm at the Forest of Magic." Reimu called as she flew off to where her instincts led her—towards the stranger's landing place.

The hunched-over spirit moaned. " . . . I'll . . . get . . . you . . . next . . . time!" she croaked.

[+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++]

This event did not go unnoticed by the rest of Genso's residents. In particular, it caught the eye of several powerful individuals.

Yakumo Yukari, of course, was the first one to notice the phenomenon—after all, it was her that allowed this event to take place. Anything traveling in or out of the slowly-expanding borders of the realm has to have her consent to do so. However, Yukari being the lazy Gap Hag we know and love, she lets more through the border than she probably should, to the chagrin of poor Reimu. This was one of those occasions, and, as usual, she didn't do anything about it. Ran was away running errands, looking after Chen, or doing ninja-fox stuff—Yukari didn't really care what her _shikigami_ was up to at times like this.

Normally, the next person who would notice such an occurrence would have been Iku and Tenshi. However, this was not the case, as Iku was currently attending a Gensokyo-wide dance competition (entitled Hopeless Fever Parade) and Tenko was . . . enjoying the company of a certain Kazami at the moment. It was actually Kanako who noted the disturbance, but paid it no mind in an effort to rid herself of an unwanted ice god asking her hand in marriage.

She kicked him off of Youkai Mountain.

Gradually, more and more beings became aware of the odd portal and the now-dangerously-close-to-the-ground figure. The Human Village looked on with a curious fascination, used to dealing with crazy events but not something like this. However, most people and places decided to wait until things had settled down a bit before investigating—and, _youkai_ being _youkai_, they would forget, as the event was not important enough for them to remember. Marisa nearly became closely acquainted with the falling person before she swerved out of the way on her broom to avoid being closely acquainted with a sense of unconsciousness and subsequently the ground.

It was Alice Margatroid, the daughter of the great Lady Shinki, who be the last to find out about this strange event. After all, it is not everyday that your house is nearly closely acquainted with a falling body. Which happened to closely acquaint itself with the ground outside of the house.

"!" Alice !'d. She had thought she had heard a sort of fearful yell coming from the outside of her house, but she dismissed that as either a Marisa fooling around again, a natural Gensokyo phenomenon or that Diamondback fool being chased by the Hell Raven. Again. She was quite surprised when she heard a loud _crash_ that resounded throughout the Forest of Magic. Alice, being the sensible Makaian she was, did not let her surprise out, but merely !'d.

"Shanghai!" she commanded. The sometimes-tiny-but-as-of-now lifesized sentient doll appeared at her master-who-could-actually-be-considered-her-mother's command.

"yES, MY LEIGE?" Shanghai responded.

"For one, tell Hourai to remove that vOICE spell from you, or else she's gonna get it," Alice instructed while grabbing her grimoire. "And second, maintain that spell. It's vital that it it keeps running like that."

"wHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, MY LEIGE?" inquired Shanghai.

"After I tell you to stop goofing around, I'll take a look at what caused that noise outside. I'll probably be back in a second, but you know what to do if I need to leave for whatever reason." Alice instructed, slipping on a special pair of gloves and an odd ring. She made for the door, but stopped right before crossing the threshold. "Oh, and Shanghai?"

"yES, MY LEIGE?"

"Stop goofing around."

With that, the Seven-Colored Puppeteer closed the door and walked away. Shanghai waited a bit, before turning to Alice's current project and concentrating to maintain the magic circle. After a few seconds, a familiar face appeared from behind the couch.

"mISSION FAILEO, HUH, SHANGHAI?"

"yEPPERS."

[++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++]

It wasn't far until Alice reached the sight of the crash—a mere several hundred feet. What surprised the magician, however, is that there was an impact crater to begin with—a body falling from that high would normally just _splat_ on the ground. Instead, what she found was a crater approximately fifty feet deep and about one hundred in diameter—of course, Alice measured it in meters, not feet. The interesting part was that the body of the falling object appeared to be resting on some kind of circle. From what she could make of it the circle appeared to have some kind of cross in the corner—but as she approached, the symbol vanished and the crater began to shift upwards—the Forest of Magic was at work healing itself. In relatively no time, the only evidence that the event occurred was the person on the forest floor, out cold.

"Huh, odd." Alice muttered to herself. She moved over to the figure and examined it—now obviously a him—for injuries, carefully rolling the person over to check the other side. Satisfied that there was no visible damage, Alice knelt and gently shook the person—appearing to be in his late teens or early twenties—and asked, "Hey, you awake? You okay?"

The person's response was to groan and shift, stimulated into consciousness. Alice shook him again, and this time the man furrowed his brow, rolled over, sat up, and opened his eyes. He opened his mouth.

_That's . . . odd_, thought Alice, frowning. The person in front of her was clearly speaking, but in an unknown language. _It's nothing like I've ever heard before_._ And I've heard a lot of languages_.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't understand what you are saying," Alice cut the man off. The man once again furrowed his brow, this time reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a strange object. The man clicked it once, and Alice felt the flow of magic swirl around him. _Definitely odd,_ she thought. _This doesn't happen normally._

The man spoke again, and, to Alice's surprise, she could actually understand what he was saying.

"Sorry about that," he said, scratching his head in embarrassment. He spoke with a middle-range tenor's voice, and Alice could tell that he carried a hint of an accent. "Not used to things like this yet. I keep on forgetting that no-one speaks the language we do."

"Er, no problem," Alice responded. She straitened up and offered her hand to him, which he accepted in a firm grip. "My name is Alice. Who are you, anyway? And why are you here? Do you know what's going on?"

The man stood and brushed off his shorts. Now that he stood up, Alice got a better look at him—red shoes, red shorts, red jacket-hooodie-sweater-thing—this guy clearly liked red. On his back was a-you guessed it—_red_ sword-like object, though she didn't know how that would be able to cut anything. The man's shock of straw-blond hair stood about a good several inches from Alice's own six-foot-high locks, from which Alice guessed he was about 5'9" or so. His eyes shone a brilliant blue, betraying a strange amount of power, and the puppeteer could tell that this guy had a very powerful aura around him—almost divine in nature.

"One question at a time, please, Miss Alice." he responded with a small chuckle. He furrowed his brow in concentration. "Now, I don't know why I'm here or what's going on, but I do know who I am." He tilted his head in a slight bow.

"My name is Shulk. I am a Homs from the Bionis—or what formerly was known as such. Now," Shulk replied, looking at Alice questioningly, "Where am I?"


	3. Chapter 3

Hey look, an update.

Chapter 2: By the Bionis

"By the Bionis!"

It is not known if Shulk had ever uttered such a phrase back home. If head done such, he would have surely been viciously scolded for such acts of blasphemy. Now, in light of recent events, it was deemed acceptable to pronounce such utterances. However, he still didn't know if saying "Oh my Shulk" was a swear. He didn't really even think about it. There was a lot of other stuff to think about. Like what a certain puppeteer just told him.

"That's incredible! To think that there are other worlds beyond the Bionis . . . !"

Alice sighed. "Yes, the world you know as the "Real World" is just the "Outside World" to us Gensokyians." _Great,_ she thought, _an Outsider who is COMPLETELY ENTHRALLED with the idea of a fantasy world. I tell him some basic exposition, and what does he do? Does he proclaim my insanity or denounce this as a dream? Nooooo, he couldn't be a good little Outsider and act normally. I _had _to get the crazy one. I can see why Reimu's so grumpy all the time though. I mean, she gets stuck with the Outsiders and even the Gappys. Poor girl—wait, am I feeling sympathy for Reimu? Oh, the human's talking._ "Sorry," Alice snapped out of her own thoughts. "Could you repeat that?"

Indeed, Shulk had started talking again amidst Alice's inner grumbling. "You said you had a couple questions for me," the male replied, "you still want to ask?"

"Not really," Alice said dismissively. "I was going to ask who you are and where you came from, but I believe I've got it all figured out."

Shulk blinked in surprise. "Oh?"

"Yes," Alice sighed once again. "You come from Europe, probably Britain or America judging by your ridiculous accent—I know what real English accents sound like, and that's not one of them. Close, but not quite. Anyway, you're probably some kind of weirdo—an _otaku_, like that wind priestess—going to some kind of meet where you dress up in weird costumes and carry around weird objects. You have no life, and Yukari decided that you, having no connections to anyone else and would therefore not be missed, would be a perfect candidate for what we call here Crossing the Border—not the kind you're thinking of," she added, seeing Shulk frown. "She probably tempted you with the promise of wondrous powers, gave you that strange translator device—you're speaking a relatively old form of Japanese here, by the way—and you either brought that strange red prop with you" here she pointed to the odd sword-like object that Shulk had placed on a couch "or Yukari gave it to you." She smirked triumphantly at her dumbfounded guest. "So, am I right, or am I right?"

Shulk tentatively raised a hand.

"Yes?" Alice raised an eyebrow—her left one, to be precise.

"Um, just one question." Shulk began. "Er, what was that, exactly?"

"Huh?" Alice didn't quite catch what he said.

"Just now," began Shulk, "What was that long exposition-type monologue you just gave? Was that supposed to be about me?" Shulk huffed. "I haven't heard of even half of the things you said. What's this Yew-rahp you speak of? Ah-mehr-i-cah? Hyuu-kah-ree? What are those things? Types of monsters?"

"What." Alice deadpanned. _Wait, what's going on?_

"If you want to know where I'm from, I'm from a . . . land? Island?" continued Shulk, crossing his arm across his chest while resting his chin in his other hand. "Called—or formerly called the Bionis. Don't ask, long story, I'm pretty sure if it's important I'll get around to explaining eventually."

Alice resisted the urge to jawdrop. Wait, has that become a verb?

"Why are you so quick to make such random assumptions?" Shulk asked, right eyebrow raised. "Is that common in this Gensokyo place?"

Alice barely held back the urge to facepalm. However, that action was performed by several dolls in the room.

Shulk continued, oblivious to Alice's plight. "I mean, you tell me where I am, I get excited about a new world—a whole new world!—and you treat me like I'm some sort of weirdo!"

Alice couldn't take any more. She raised her hand for silence, to which Shulk complied in a fair amount of confusion. She got up from the table, walked over to her Marisa-Proof Invincible Iron Door, courtesy of NitoriTech™, and proceeded to assault the metal with her forehead.

Shulk stared on in awe and a kind of detached horror as the Daughter of Shinki unflinchingly, unhaltingly, unsparingly, and unwisely CAVED her door over and over again. Such an awesome, magnificent, and terrible scene it was! (Author's Unwanted Note: Hai gaiz! Didja know? "Caved" means "Headbutt" in Touhouese! Dohohohohoho *shot* You: GET OUT!)

Hot vapours of the youkai's lifeblood spilt

From skin broken upon her forehead pale,

And in the madness of a crazéd guilt

Against the wall she did successively wale.

The straw-haired magician continued to pound

Against the wall she did so despise,

For the tempered steel could be found

Dented, fractured cracks now did arise.

Shulk blinked. _Odd_.

"Uoooooooh . . . . Uooooooooooooh . . . Uaaaaaaargh . . . . Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhgh!" Alice suddenly screamed as she continued to pound away.

X

Several miles from there, Marisa had touched down. She was still a bit shaken up from her near-certain collision with the falling object, now known to be Shulk, and had decided to head back home for a second to catch her breath. Suddenly, her ear caught hold of a strange melody floating on the wind . . .

" . . . . uuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa . . ."

" . . . I know that voice . . ." muttered the witch. She then grabbed her broom and flew off towards her friend's house.

X

Alice, face now bloodied, repeatedly slammed her forehead on the door, her assaults picking up in tempo.

"Uoooh . . Y-Yukari . . . Only you would pull such a stunt . . ." Alice muttered.

Shulk was speechless.

Alice slammed her head against the wall. "You and your pet projects are my curse!"

*Caved*

"Your newest project has" *caved* "shamed me" *caved* "with a penalty" *caved* "on my charisma!"

"And you left a scar on my mind that would never fade!" *Caved*

"I'll bury you! I'll bury you with my bare hands! Death! Death!"

*Cavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecavecave*

The screen faded to black. Wait, no, it didn't.

Shulk stood there with his jaw dropped, dumbfounded, as Alice stood there unmoving. Blood flowed freely from the self-inflicted wound upon her forehead, and, astonishingly, the solid metal door now resembled a Prius after getting run over by an eighteen-wheeler. He was about to say something when he heard something from the outside.

"Hey, Alice! You all right, ze? I heard your scream and-"

The speaker never finished her sentence, for at the first sound, Alice twitched, stepped back, and kicked what was formerly the door. The twisted heap of metal flew backwards with the force of the Makaian's mighty blow, and sailed away, far into Gensokyo's sky, carrying with it whatever was unfortunate enough to be directly in its line of momentum. Which includes Marisa.

Alice took a deep breath. "Sorry about that. I kinda snapped, huh?"

Shulk nodded hesitantly.

Alice scratched the back of her head in slight embarrassment. "It's . . . a long story. To put it simply, there have been a lot of people crossing the Border from the Outside world—I'm guessing you can but two and two together—and nearly all of them had backstories similar to the one I accused you of having. It really is all Yukari's fault, as she's the one who brings them here, as I said before." she sighed exasperatedly. "We just got out of a really bad incident concerning a Border-crosser, or, as we like to call them here, a Gappy." she smirked. "I'm sure that if it's important, you'll find out about it somehow."

_Strange how these things work_, thought Shulk.

"So, in short, I am sorry for my poor performance this past half hour." Alice apologized. "Can we start over?"

Shulk nodded. He stuck out his hand, which Alice firmly accepted.

"Alright then," Shulk started, "I'm Shulk, from the Bionis. I have no clue how I got here, or where 'here' even is. Thank you for your hospitality and your, uh, generous information-sharing."

"No problem. I'm Alice Margatroid, as I have already said," Alice Margatroid repeated, "and I'm sure that you'll be able to find your way back eventually. Oh, and let's make this official."

She gestured to her now-nonexistent door and smirked.

"Welcome to Gensokyo."


End file.
